I actually think this highlights an important point: the majority of "criminals" in the statistics are likely not to be criminals in any serious sense, and would pose no serious harm to any community whatsoever. After all, the US is a notorious over-incarcerator, and crimes are selectively enforced to keep the underclass in place (you may recall after all that the richest man in the country is an illegal immigrant).
This also underplays the current cruelty of the US system, far out of proportion with any proper policing of immigration (which obviously reasonable people can argue about). So, I don't think you're wrong exactly, and you can play the victim if you want ("I know I will be downvoted", sad violin).
Agree heavily with this. I will be adding more stats on this soon, but you can see on the map chart at the bottom that these detainees are overwhelmingly categorized (by ICE) as low or no threat level, even those convicted of minor offenses & misdemeanors. Very few are “Threat Level 1”, which are the “violent” offenders we hear so much about.
Seems over-focussed on the economic impact. I have never seen a museum of concentration camp victims that highlighted how much they could have made number go up.
Hey, this is super fair. I debated whether to include these numbers, but I felt it was a powerful message that, in a time when no one can afford an emergency in the US, the average detainment would be a massive cost. I understand if you feel going further and having the big number and the tax number is a bit insensitive, but my thinking was this could be a convincing common ground for conservatives who only care about $$$.
Let me know if you think I could frame it better than I am, always open to feedback
I think the lost-revenue number is important and relevant, it underlines the hypocrisy of US fascism to be claiming on the one hand to balance the books while spending billions of dollars on performative cruelty. But I do think only presenting the numbers in isolation is insufficient, and comes off a little strange. Even a little blurb at the top (this is an unprecedented failure of the rule of law, ICE agents frequently arrest people illegally, this kind of thing) would be an improvement. It isn't actually clear at face value whether you think this project is morally wrong, or just expensive.
There are some quantitative questions it would be good to clarify, too. For instance, "convicted criminal" - does this cover people convicted of real crimes, or fake ones engineered by the administration? "pending criminal charges" - are these arrests illegal or likely illegal? should they be portrayed in a hostile light, or just neutrally, as if the courts are going to find these people guilty they just haven't got to it yet. Other useful segments that are relevant include the splitting up of families, the detention of children and the vulnerable, withholding of medication and religious materials. Unfortunately, the list goes on.
Definitely keep it. If someone is focused on the humanitarian aspect of this, they're the choir. No need to preach to them. See my above comment about including some credibly-neutral description of detention conditions, including the psychological aspect of there being zero process and total chaos.
My reply seems at face value to contradict this one, but I don't actually disagree, depending on what you mean by neutral. Certainly any comment should be based in facts, but I would be hard-pressed to describe what the admin is doing both truthfully and in a non-negative light.
Yea I was gonna say: frame it in some quantifiable terms of human suffering, except half the country enthusiastically cheers for human suffering, and would also turn it into a “suffering leaderboard.” We are living in dark times.
Not a museum, but you might be interested to know that a lot of historians argue that "the industrialists" in late 1920s and 1930s Germany went along with the holocaust because for a lot of them it just meant more business, and for some free labour.
In fact if you consider the question of what's the difference between "fascism" and "authoritarianism", the answer is that fascism is a subset of authoritarianism that focuses of business.
So yes, a lot of it is about money/business/economic impact. Always has been.
Yes, certainly. The economic effect of forced labour, and its impact on the motivations of people, is historically important. I only intended to question the highlighting. A statement like "people went along with the evils of the holocaust because they were motivated by money" is one thing; "a holocaust would be good for business" is another.
I think it's hard to capture in a few numbers - it's not exactly analogous, for instance in Martha Gellhorn's The Face of War, specifically her reports from Western European theater of WW2, she could never forget that part of the stated purpose by Nazi officals for those concentration camps and other captured peoples made to work for Nazi regime in other areas was to extract maximal economic value from them while working them to death and the German people as a whole felt essentially zero impact on their day to day life and benefited from the crops and material looted from captured territories or created by those captured by the Nazis, not to mention all the valuables looted from the people sent to concentration camps in forms of their business capital/jewelry/extracted gold teeth/other personal valuables. In one sense these current day agricultural/trade workers/labor system are subsidizing a lower price of some agricultural/trade products at least in the market we had. If we had a perfect market, the labor cost should go up in their absence to attract domestic workers in hand with end product cost though this has not happened in several prior crackdowns on undocumented immigrant labor in the USA. In addition to direct citizen monetary costs we might count a.) the spending on ICE b.) the discretionary funding by executive branch to farmers/ranchers to replace lost income as happened in aftermath of Trump's first term tariff regime.
I mean, what you describe sounds pretty good. It sounds like you think it's not feasible for some reason (other than political will). Do you want to elaborate on that?
It certainly is feasible. Requiring it to happen though, would result in some interesting economic dynamics, I believe.
We currently exist in a two tier global economy where some countries are required to follow a strict set of laws, and others basically make their own. To be clear, I am saying that Russia and China do not care at all about piracy and IP theft and so on.
As you increase the rules that Western companies must follow, you run the risk that some day your only options will be non-Western companies, and that may or may not be a good thing. This is what has happened with manufacturing, and it was good for a while until it wasn't. It still is quite good in some pockets though, like batteries and solar.
Seriously: why? If you think this practice is wrong, and you wouldn't participate in it, and you think voting with your wallet isn't utterly futile (i.e. it would cause some companies to change their behaviour) then why is individual, atomised action the only legitimate one? Why is it not legitimate to make a change in the law, as a collective?
I agree with you that it's a silly semantic argument. I would not be satisfied by replacing all the "buy" button by "rent". But I vehemently disagree with everything else you say:
> the core issue is people/consumers feel entitled to relive childhood experiences
> You don't own a right to enjoy other people's work
> If they want to show it to you once and then burn it in a fire - that's their right
I do, absolutely, think I am entitled to this. Why not? Do you really think it is a good thing that people can make something valuable, share it with people in a way they find moving, and then destroy it? Do you think it's a good thing when people burn books?
I feel like you are appealing to the way things are ("it's their right") and not thinking at all about how things should be. Why should it be their right? What if we changed the laws so that they didn't have that right? That doesn't mean obliterating intellectual property, it just means that for this fake pseudo-property we change the already-artificial rules very slightly to make society better. Why not?
There are countless cases of historical figures burning their unfinished works before their death. It's absolutely their right. I find it grotesque to feel you have a right to other people's work. You have don't nothing for them. They owe you nothing. You're just a faceless/nameless consumer that they don't know - who only cares about your own pleasure and not giving anything
> What if we changed the laws so that they didn't have that right?
I think it doesn't solve anything ultimately. It just makes things worse and more inconvenient. For instance piracy just made everything a SaaS where the code isn't even accessible and is on a server behind an API. If everyone can own and copy games, then business models will just shift to where nobody ever sells games and everyone just has to stream through some online service. Everyone will lose out
Unfinished works are a slightly different matter. I still disagree by and large with destroying them, but I can see the argument for it, especially when it is the explicit wish of the author.
Published works are different: you released it, why? People publish art precisely so that it can be enjoyed by others. Your argument as stated seems to naively imply that if I write a book and decide later I'm embarrassed by it, I should be able to remotely destroy all the copies. That's probably an unfair reading and not what you meant, but there is nothing in your argument that rules it out.
Sharing a creative work is a reciprocal act. The consumer (who usually pays for it, by the way) gets pleasure in enjoying the work, and the creator gets pleasure from their reputation and from feeling like they made something important. It is normal and healthy for both sides of that interaction to feel like they are a holistic part of the work. Why do you think so many people form communities around the kind of art they like? Bands are nothing if they have no fans, artists are nothing if they have no following.
To just dismiss this as a nameless/faceless consumer is honestly not even offensive, I just don't believe you.
it's a nice argument. I mean it sincerely and it has changed my mind some
But
"It is normal and healthy for both sides of that interaction to feel like they are a holistic part of the work."
This is just a bit ridiculous ... You person is creating and investing effort in to it and one is not. And the creator should dictate the terms under which he wishes to share his work.
To follow your musical example. If a musican wants to do a performance once and not leave a record, why should he not?
The audience isn't "part of the work" and thereby granted rights to a copy or to listen to it later
That's very gracious of you to admit! Obviously "the creator should dictate ..." part I just disagree with. Incidentally note that what you say is actually much stronger than the real situation - in the real world, copyright is time-limited and subject to exceptions ("fair uses"). It does not sound like you agree with these justifications - if you do, then my position can be phrased more palatably as "I think the class of fair uses is broader than you do".
About the specific moral question you pose:
> If a musican wants to do a performance once and not leave a record, why should he not?
Reversing the question is obviously, "If I want to record a performance I went to see, why should I not?". But I think this is easy to just answer directly. It is very hard to portray the musician who wants to prevent recording here sympathetically. Of course we can't appeal to the usual reasoning (that they're recording it themselves, and want to sell the recording) since you say they don't want it recorded at all. Maybe they want to sell an album, and they're playing the album in the show, and they want to keep recordings of those songs artificially scarce. So let's limit to the case where I record it for my personal use, and I'm not allowed to share it. Or I can sell the recording for the same price as the album, and I have to give it to the musician. What harm is there left for it to do?
The only remaining thing I can say as the musician is "I don't like it and I created the music so you can't have it". Sorry to say this, but this is the logic of a playground bully. Comparing the harm ("I don't like it and I will throw a tantrum if you record me") with the potential benefit ("I get to remember and relive this concert for the rest of my life") it is just a no-brainer to me.
> "If I want to record a performance I went to see, why should I not?"
Because that's the agreement you go into when you see the performance. Same with a purchase of a game with a particular license. If you don't agree to the creators terms, you're free to not partake. But you can't in effect just say, "I don't like your terms, I'm going to do what I please with your work"
You're dictating that you either have to give it out entirely (to everyone? sort of?) or not at all. I think this is just violating people's innate right to direct their labor/work/efforts in a way that they wish. To me it feels fundamentally sort of dehumanizing
In the end, as I illustrate in some of the other comments, I think it fundamentally doesn't really solve anything and leads to people just contorting themselves further to regain control (using DRM and SaaS'ing their software) Mario in 20 years will probably just be streamed from a server and you'll never have access to the code in any form at all
As for copyright.. simplistically I think it makes sense to control your work while you're alive and not control it once you die (the whole idea of children controlling their parent's legacy is kinda gross to me). But that's not a real workeable solution for a variety of reasons. The current system seems ok. I have no strong opinions...
> If you don't agree to the creators terms, you're free to not partake.
What I am trying to get you to understand is that I am also free to petition for the laws to change.
> You're dictating that you either have to give it out entirely (to everyone? sort of?) or not at all.
I am dictating that you have to release it under terms that are fair or not at all. I'm not saying anything about giving it away. For example if somebody sold an album under the condition that they can take it away from me for any reason with no compensation, I think that's unfair, and the police should stop them from doing it. Writing something into a contract does not magically make it acceptable behaviour!
> I think it fundamentally doesn't really solve anything
You haven't actually said why, the only argument you've given is a kind of defeatist "legal changes never achieve anything". That's historically wrong. Stop Killing Games is actually not asking for very much at all, it's not like they're forcing all (any) games to release their source code. It's much more likely that if the law passed they would just come up with a sunset plan.
> historical figures burning their unfinished works before their death
> unfinished
Do you not see the difference between this and what is being discussed?
No one is saying that game studios have to release everything they are working on as open source from the moment they start writing code. They are saying that once a game is published and sold on the market, it needs to remain usable for as long as the actual hardware to run it is usable.
False dichotomy. The only reason your own can go black is some hw/sw failure, a risk which anyone can minimise easily by having copies. Your access of a remote corporate server can go away for 1000 reasons, making you more vulnerable.
Of course it's more complex, like how often that data changes and costs of backups vs subscription price. But I find any argument for cloud products etching towards a "you'll own nothing and be happy" economy.
It isn't a dichotomy! You are trying to argue that cloud storage is a bad choice on pure ideological grounds, but you haven't justified it with any data. It is a matter of fact that you are more likely to misconfigure, lose, destroy or otherwise screw up your self-hosted solution than Amazon are to withdraw service. If your reason is just "I hate Amazon" or "I don't like services that are not under my control" then say that.
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